Yoshino Stroll
by Pouncer
Summary: I always forget how beautiful it is, Elizabeth murmured, helpless to restrain her smile. Gen. Spoilers through 2x02 The Intruder. Written in spring 2006.


**Yoshino Stroll**

By Pouncer

The Pentagon disgorged Doctor Elizabeth Weir and Major John Sheppard just after noon, but Washington wasn't done with them yet. Whisked by car to the Capitol, they spent the next four hours testifying to a closed, and highly-cleared, joint Congressional committee about Atlantis and the Pegasus Galaxy and the Wraith threat.

Elizabeth had left a year earlier expecting to return with gifts of scientific discovery, with all the knowledge of the Ancients deciphered. Instead she was defending their actions to smug, fat-cat politicians.

She had never seen John look so formal – he wore dress blues and actually sat up straight the entire time. She was tempted to slouch herself, particularly when Senator Idiot from Vermont started in on the amount of funding Stargate Command had absorbed in the past eight years. Elizabeth saw John twitch out of the corner of her eye.

She asked him later, standing on the West steps of the Capitol, "Do you have budget-induced trauma?"

John's aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. He looked south toward the glassed-in botanic garden -- sunlight glinted off its façade -- before answering, "I was stationed at the Pentagon when I was a lieutenant, as an action officer for the Apache upgrade." He turned back to Elizabeth and said, "You haven't lived until you've stayed all night revising the POM submission." His lips quirked. "At least I shouldn't have to deal with that now."

It was clear as the spring air that John thought he would be ordered to stay on Earth. Elizabeth had seen the way General Landry looked at John, and she'd read every report Atlantis had sent in that desperate data burst. She knew what the words looked like, bereft of the expression on John's face when he'd told her Sumner's fate.

Time for a distraction. Elizabeth gazed down the length of the Mall, past the Washington Monument. "I saw," she began, "on the news this morning. The cherry trees are in bloom." She raised an eyebrow at John. "Want to take a look?"

"Sounds good," John said, and rushed down two steps at a time, his back still straight.

Elizabeth followed more slowly, enjoying the breeze. John paced at the base of the steps and it was odd to see his hair covered with a uniform cap.

"John, this isn't a race," she said as she joined him, trying for amused instead of concerned.

He stopped and his shoulders dropped into a stance she recognized. "Yeah. I know."

They caught a cab to the Tidal Basin, sharing stories about squiring friends around DC in an effort to avoid thinking about their imminent demise at the hands of the cabbie. It would be almost poetic to survive the Wraith and then die because of an insane driver.

For all that it was a weekday afternoon, people were everywhere: tourists carrying cameras aimed at the museums, families leading children who'd rather romp on the grass, worker bees escaping office tedium. Traffic halted the cab just past the World War II Memorial and John began to fidget. Elizabeth said, "Walk from here?" and John was out the door after thrusting a twenty dollar bill at the driver. An outrageous overpayment, but Elizabeth didn't want to wait for change either.

It looked like the clouds had deserted the sky for the ring of cherry trees circling the water. The throngs didn't deter Elizabeth or John's progress closer and closer, until finally they were underneath the branches and into faerie land.

"I always forget how beautiful it is," Elizabeth murmured, helpless to restrain her smile. Gnarled, thick tree trunks spread out into horizontal branches full of mass upon mass of white and pale pink petals, looking like butterflies about to take wing against the blue sky.

Restless, John wandered onwards, looking back and jerking his chin for Elizabeth to follow. She was grateful she'd gone for practicality when she'd dressed this morning. A pantsuit and loafers meant she could circumnavigate the Tidal Basin comfortably. Anyway, skirts and heels felt alien to her now.

They walked and walked, both eager to shake the day's confinement. They should have things to discuss, plans to make, but Elizabeth felt that all of her words had been spent on the post-mortem of the past year.

A park ranger stood below a massive stone lantern, weaving a tale of international friendship and arboreal gifts from Japan in 1912. The ranger spoke about the meaning of cherry blossoms in Japanese culture, how they were treasured for their transience and celebrated in art and literature.

Elizabeth had spent enough years teaching at Georgetown to remember the agonies when meteorologists forecast rain or high winds for cherry blossom time. The slightest deviation from perfect weather and Washington was denuded of its glory, petals swept away for another year.

John had stopped, was listening along with the tourists, a sentinel in Air Force blue. Elizabeth saw people looking at him sideways, perhaps wondering if he'd just returned from some distant battlefront. He had, but no place they'd ever heard of. Elizabeth wondered if it meant anything to him, that their fights were unknown. If the danger the wide universe held were publicized, would these people still while away an afternoon contemplating beauty? Or maybe they'd be more eager, determined to wring every drop of pleasure from a life filled with peril.

"I'm glad we're here now," John said to Elizabeth in a low voice. "It's good to see something normal, after everything."

Elizabeth gazed around at the people and the trees, at the dome of the Jefferson Memorial rising across the water, and knew exactly how John felt. She'd soak up this brief interval before returning to Colorado to plan their return to Atlantis. She remembered now, what they were protecting, why they had to decipher the Ancients' secrets, why they had to stop the Wraith.

The setting sun lit the sky gold and scarlet as Elizabeth ambled onwards. Wind fluttered the cherry blossoms overhead, making them fall down like rain.

-end-

_POM submission_ - Program Objective Memorandum, aka the Defense Department budget.

_Notes_: Written for **slodwick**'s 4th Annual "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" Challenge. No disrespect is intended toward Senators or citizens of Vermont. My thanks to **elishavah** and **mswalter** for their beta efforts.

_Disclaimer_: Not mine, alas.

_Feedback makes the cherry tree blossoms survive longer! Do you want them to fall in a day?_


End file.
